A review of rapid prototyping integrated investment casting processes

Abstract

Investment casting is competitive with all other casting processes where the size of the product is within a mutually castable range. Though investment casting is used to produce metal parts of any intricate shapes with excellent surface finish, it suffers from long lead time and high tooling costs, which makes it uneconomical for the production of either single casting, or small and medium production units. These problems could be overcome by the applications of rapid prototyping and rapid tooling technologies for low-volume investment casting production runs. The present article analyzes different classifications of rapid prototyping techniques and it reviews various investigations made on the usability of rapid prototyping- and rapid tooling-integrated investment casting process, with their advantages and limitations. The emerging areas of applications of rapid prototyping like dentistry, jewelry, surgical implants, turbine blades, etc., are accordingly discussed. Further, an elaborate discussion is made on the application of newer technologies for directly developing ceramic shells. This article also emphasizes on various future scopes possible in rapid prototyping-integrated investment casting process.

Patient specific mandibular implant for maxillofacial surgery using additive manufacturing

“…The investment casting using additive manufacturing patterns is dominant in orthopedics and dental industry for fabrication of a variety of products such as crowns, dental prosthesis and knee joint replacement etc. [10,11,12]. In dental implants, the casting of Titanium and its alloys have provided promising results in mechanical, metallurgical and In-vitro corrosion tests [13].…”

Novel casting processes for single-crystal turbine blades of superalloys

“…Over the past years, rapid prototyping (RP) systems have been increasingly applied in wax-pattern manufacturing to reduce production time and costs [4][5][6][7]. However, owing to the "step effect" generated with the layer stacking and the surface roughness of the fabricated parts, RP technology remains limited to the production of single casting or small production units.…”

Enhancing dimensional accuracy of FDM based biomedical implant replicas by statistically controlled vapor smoothing process

“…IC process has an ability to produce intricate shapes with high accuracy, surface finish, and thus, considered one of the most versatile metal casting processes [3]. The design of replicas can be customized as per requirement within very short span of time by editing CAD file which make it highly flexible.…”